La reconstrucción del paso del tiempo en el videojuego Sid Meier´s Civilization IV. Una perspectiva educativa

Resumo

The growing use of historical strategy videogames by the faculty of some educative levels as learning tool invite us to think about the transmitted contents and their adequacy with the historical and cultural reality of the different civilizations. The objectives of this article are, on the one side, to know how the passing of history is represented in Civilization IV videogame and, on the other side, to reflect about its ability or inability to present veraciously historical processes and to analyze the possible alternatives of utilization as educational tool in formal contexts. Using this tool as curricular material requires an approach to its role as element of cultural (re)production from a critical point of view. The present work analyzes in a narrative way the chronological and discursive time in the Sid Meier’s Civilization IV game as well as the historical narrative’s evolution. We consider the changes in the setting, events, characters and units, as well as the duration of the turns as elements of analysis of the temporal advance of history. We make a multidisciplinary approach from three perspectives: anthropology, history and education, which serve us as contrast frame to analyze the determinant aspects of the reconstruction made in this videogame and, next, giving a perspective about how use this videogames as possible educational tools. We expect to show three ways of inclusion of this material as a way to deal with its educational uses.